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Cherwell Service Management vs JIRA Service Management comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 29, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cherwell Service Management
Ranking in Help Desk Software
27th
Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)
27th
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
JIRA Service Management
Ranking in Help Desk Software
2nd
Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
88
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the IT Service Management (ITSM) category, the mindshare of Cherwell Service Management is 1.6%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of JIRA Service Management is 7.3%, down from 11.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Service Management (ITSM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
JIRA Service Management7.3%
Cherwell Service Management1.6%
Other91.1%
IT Service Management (ITSM)
 

Featured Reviews

Thobile Moeketsi - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager at Sasria SOC Ltd.
Having everything in one location has significantly improved our efficiency and reporting
We need to be on VPN in order to set up and access the solution, and that has created some challenges. Even though it uses our Windows login, we still have to be on VPN. The product should be able to log tickets directly from system to system. We haven't got there yet and I'm not sure it's possible but it would determine the product's capability to integrate with other systems.
Sohaib Ahmad - PeerSpot reviewer
Vice President Service Delivery at quixel
Comprehensive workflows and data views have supported complex teams but still need cost improvements
JIRA Service Management is costly. The pricing structure needs improvement. When I add some plugins, I have to pay the cost for every user whether they are using it or not. For smaller companies, the detailed workflow editing and the kind of details that JIRA Service Management provides would be complex. For startups and smaller companies, JIRA Service Management would be complex. The cloud offering is easier because I don't have to manage the infrastructure. There are two templates of the project: company-managed and team-managed. Team-managed is a newer feature, which is good for startup-kind companies where they don't need control over data from multiple projects displaying in one dashboard. For startups, JIRA Service Management is somewhat complex with its schemes and everything. Capacity management should be improved in terms of additional features in the next release of JIRA Service Management.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"All our activities are carried out in the one place."
"The most valuable features are problem management and change management."
"Its integration features, orchestration features, and discovery tools are the most valuable. It is also pretty stable, and it can be as scalable as you want."
"The dashboard is very useful to get a quick overview of current tasks."
"Clear processes with transparent responsibilities led to more efficiencies within the teams."
"The dashboard and the reporting functionality are the solution's most valuable features."
"What I really like about this solution, is how it manages the queues, the tickets and the routing."
"The product is not lacking anything that a QA will want to use."
"Everyone knows how to use it, so there's no need to teach new members."
"The query language and the ability to create views of the data are very useful."
"JIRA Service Management provides comprehensive data management, different views with customizable dashboards, a detailed level of customization from items to workflows to roles and teams, and very flexible integration through the Atlassian marketplace plugins."
"One of the valuable features is that an automatic response or action can be taken on tickets."
"The links between the help desk and Jira issues and between Confluence and Jira issues are most valuable. I can write requirements in Confluence and link them to user stories in Jira and test cases. I can see my test coverage and all that kind of stuff. The integration between these three is very useful. It is pretty customizable, and it integrates well. There are a lot of add-ins and a lot of connectors to third-party products. In my last company, we used Test Royal for managing all the tests, and it integrated perfectly with that. For any issue or bug, we could see what tests have been run and the complete history of the tests."
"Confluence is a great tool for documentation and tracking."
 

Cons

"Access is only available if we're on VPN."
"Application service mapping, GRC, SecOps, and things like that need improvement."
"Areas for improvement would be the service catalog and customer catalog, which is not very user-friendly. The shopping cart experience is also terrible - you submit and go straight to the cart, you can't continue shopping or see your overall cost."
"The stability, specifically in the on-premises deployment model, could be improved."
"There is room for improvement in support."
"Cost has prohibited us from switching entirely to this solution."
"Initially, as a completely new user, the interface was not very user-friendly, with many cluttered options."
"The search function could be improved. We have to search a certain way. There is no generic search; it is more object-oriented search."
"Field addition and removal features are not very intuitive in JIRA Service Management."
"Instability happens sometimes - although not frequently."
"The way it handles subtasks can be improved. We would really like the ability to have different types of subtasks. If we have a user story for a feature, we would like to have a subtask for documentation, a subtask for requirements, a subtask for development, and a subtask for testing. Right now, we just make four subtasks, but there is no way to specify their type, so we have to add a custom field to specify what type of work is this. It just means you've got to look at more data. For logging time or time tracking, we would like to have something using which we can define the work type we're doing. We would like to log whether we're working on a bug, a new development, scope change, or rework. We've got a user story for which we do the dev, and then we have to do more dev. It is the same story, but some of it could have been a scope change, and some of it could be a rework because we either screwed up the first time or missed something obvious. Currently, we have to have a custom field and track that separately. It would be nice to have some kind of work type for logging time."
"I would like to see the user interface changed, it is not very user-friendly, and it transitions workflows."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"For an ITIL user, the cost is probably about 50 bucks a month."
"But about the plugins, I found one plug-in — its name is Actionable Metric I think — and it is $3000. That is very expensive for users in Iran."
"It depends on the number of users but it starts at $20 per month per user. I would rate them a three out of five for pricing."
"Do not forget to calculate add-on costs. These cost a percentage of the JIRA purchasing costs and are based on the number of JIRA users."
"The price for JIRA Service Management is reasonable and cheaper than other ITSM solutions, but the licensing model is different, so you cannot compare it with other solutions. Overall, the pricing for the solution is acceptable."
"The pricing is free for us because we are an associate partner for the product."
"It is a cheaply priced product."
"Right now, there are only two of us who are both agents on the help desk and developers. We might be on the free version because we're less than three agents or users. I'm looking at Zephyr tests, which have a $10 a month flat rate, so right now, it is $10 a month. There are lots of add-ons. They do a free version, a standard version, and a premium version. In the last company, we started on $50 a month. By the time I left, we were paying $4,500 a month. That was mainly because we had 100 users on Confluence. I bought an add-on for Jira software for which we had 10 users, and that was $5 per user per month. It was costing me $500 a month, whereas it should only be $50 a month. I don't know if licensing fee has changed. I'd like our whole company to use it, but the big problem is the licensing because the Confluence side is what is really useful, but if I add 30 users to Confluence and then buy an extension for Jira software, I've got to pay for 30 licenses, even though I've only got two users in Jira software. It is the one big disadvantage of cloud software. You always have to pay for the number of seats regardless of which product you are on. This will probably severely limit how many people would use it because I'm not going to start paying $10 per user per month for a Jira software add-on when there are only two people using it."
"Costs are about $50 per user per year. JIRA is sold in user tiers of 25, 50, 100, 250, 500, 2000, 10,000, and unlimited users. It is bad when you have 51 users then the price is based on that 100 user tier. Users at 100 will be the most cost effective."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Energy/Utilities Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Retailer
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Educational Organization
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business30
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise33
 

Also Known As

No data available
JIRA Service Desk, Atlassian Jira Service Management
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Ausenco, Highlights for Children, B/E Aerospace
mgm technology partners, Telestream, Build.com, Zend Technologies, OfficeDrop, PGS Software, American Diabetes Association, NEPTUNE Canada
Find out what your peers are saying about Cherwell Service Management vs. JIRA Service Management and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.
882,103 professionals have used our research since 2012.